Saint[the]Sinner are a post-hardcore/rock/metalcore band from right here in the UK. Although they have not been around for all that long, they have still managed to share stages with bands the like of Enter Shikari, A Day To Remember, Parkway Drive and The Blackout, as well as a host of others. Perhaps it is this diverse portfolio of live performances that has lead to this, their latest EP Masquerades having quite such a varied sound.
Within each song, Saint[the]Sinner seem to travel through the sounds of a lot of different other bands. The heavy sections travel through the sounds of Bleeding Through and Motionless In White in particular, with their blacker metalcore take on things, but the comparisons don’t stop there. In ‘Left For Dead‘ you can hear a bit of The Devil Wears Prada; in ‘She’s a Vampire‘ and ‘Set It Off‘ there’s a lot of the early-sounding Unearth low-end riffage mixed in there as well.
The clean vocals too don’t so much wear their influences on their sleeve so much as have their sleeve actually made out of the CD booklets of the bands they are trying to emulate. All the way through the six tracks there is a lot of The Used coming across in the clean vocal sections (see especially the start to ‘Left For Dead‘) as well as some of the clean vocal sections Memphis May Fire have become known for doing (although Saint[the]Sinner sound a lot more like The Hollow-era Memphis May Fire).
While this is all very well and good, and quite cool to hear the character of other bands coming through so strong in the mix, it is at times hard to take Saint[the]Sinner quite so seriously as the bands that have leant their sounds to them. If you want to listen to blackened metalcore, chances are you’d be listening to Motionless In White and Bleeding Through Already, in which case you’d have heard a lot of what’s on this album already. If you wanted some quirky-yet-atmospheric clean singing then you’d already have listened to The Used or even Escape The Fate and had a good time with them.
Although Masquerades is a solid listen, you can’t help but feel that Saint[the]Sinner have fallen victim to their own influences and even though they have tried to compile them all into one place (a feat they do pull of rather well) the sounds on this album have been done by someone somewhere else already, and to a better standard.
